Santa Barbara Gets a Second Dose of Brave New Work

“Brave New Work is not a series of talks about the future. It is a series of encounters with what the future means,” said founder Michael Delgado. At last year’s inaugural edition of Brave New Work, a sense of seeking definition of purpose and vision hovered over the series, but Delgado and his team are back with a vengeance for year two of what is essentially a seminar and exhibition program geared around the inevitable interface of art and technology — including elements of AI and a broad canvas of topics and guests.

Delgado, a Santa Barbara transplant from the L.A. art world, whose marketing company is Brandwell Arts, is the brains and ambitious force behind this effort, which unveils its second annual event October 1 and 6-8. (October 1 hosts an artist’s projection in another lodge, the Oddfellows Lodge, with the October 6-8 period as the concentrated schedule.) This year, the seminar’s central hub of panel discussions and other activities is in the large former Staples site at 410 State Street, now owned by UCSB.

The site will be transformed for Brave New Work’s installation. “We are going to fill the cavernous 155-foot-by-18-foot-tall space with live, 10-12 foot palm trees and lots of other live flora. Artists Iason Paterakis and Nefeli Manoudaki are using technology developed by Alan Macy (founder of the SBCAST) to monitor the electrical impulses that the plants emit,” Delgado explains. 

“The artists ‘listen’ to the plants’ ‘conversation’ through an AI generative model they have constructed. The model translates the conversation into a real-time visualization that is projected along the entire span of the building for a completely spectacular, moving and immersive experience.” 

In a special “off-campus” performance, Brave New Work moves to Music Academy of the West’s Miraflores campus and its prized Hahn Hall, for a performance by the Santa Barbara Youth Symphony (on October 6). There, Beatie Wolfe will perform the Brian Eno score live to her film L.A. PipeDreams; Beastie Boys–connected producer Money Mark and Guggenheim recipient new music composer Gene Coleman are also on the roster. Elsewhere, the action shifts to Dr. JoAnn Kuchera-Morin’s innovative Allosphere at UCSB, along with a visit to the University’s MAT (Media Arts Technology).

Branding itself as a conference exploring “New & Emerging Technologies in the Hands of Artists,” “Brave New Works 2.0” accentuates a particular environmental focus this year. Delgado’s operation is a work in progress, all about a subject very much in contemporary crosshairs.

We checked in with Delgado to get the lowdown on what to expect from this year’s edition. 

Brave New Work is something new and ambitious on the Santa Barbara scene. How do you reflect back on the experience and outcome of last year’s kickoff, highs and lows?

Last year, for a first effort, Brave New Work (BNW) was a real success. The involvement of most every cultural and scientific institution in the area, from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art to the Google Quantum Lab and several UCSB premier programs like Neuroscience and the Media Art and Technology (MAT)/TransLab, and the presentation of internationally renowned contemporary artists who have recently shown in the world’s most prestigious museums, like the Tate (London), the Whitney Museum of American Art, and LACMA, was, if I say so myself, “not too shabby.”

We learned some important lessons. As you can see from the list of institutions involved, the vision for a citywide event was put in place, but I stacked the programming too tightly, forcing attendees to choose one panel discussion over another in a different location. That will be okay when we reach festival-size attendance, but in a debut effort, we took a modest group and broke them into smaller groups, which hindered networking among participants, one of our top goals.

We also pulled it together in just a year, so we were building that ship as we were sailing it. This made it difficult to secure sponsors and properly promote because much of the programming didn’t coalesce until late in the process.

That said, we have shown a real proof of concept and have demonstrated that the area is eager to participate in the discussion around the intersection of science and the humanities that we are hoping to lead.

The premise of BNW is to engage the community in a discussion around the questions: humanity vs. technology — is it black and white like that, or is there a third path? Can we, by convening world leaders in science, technology, and the arts, create technologies for good and dodge our annihilation as recently predicted by AI insiders?

Were there paradigms of similar conferences you drew on when conceiving the project, and are/will there be more with the rapid growth of AI as a force in our lives — and the arts?

We think about “TED Talks crashed into Art Basel,” or maybe the Venice Biennale, as a part of our vision for the city. But the analogy breaks down quickly because TED topics are so broad and their events so ubiquitous, they have lost some of their potency. Art Basel and even the Venice Biennale are incredibly commercial. SXSW in its very early days might be a better comparison, but that, too, has now been sucked into the corporate black hole. We’ve landed on describing BNW as “part public art exhibition, part concert, and part symposium.” It doesn’t really fit a particular category, and we consider that a feature, not a bug.

Regarding AI, last year the subtitle under Brave New Work was “AI and Tech in the Hands of Artists.” We encountered a strong reaction to the dismissal of AI in the arts. When I first had the idea for the confab, AI was just exploding onto the popular consciousness, and now, within only 18 months, it’s been integrated and then rejected in schools and overall is regarded with high suspicion, even though everyone is using it in some capacity, whether they do so knowingly or not.

I used my agent to answer these questions, for example. Just kidding. Had I done so, you would be able to tell, because there would be no sense of humor in the response. But they are working on that.

This thought brings real importance to the mission of BNW. Our goal is to promote the collaboration of science and the humanities to develop new technologies for good.

Brave New Work is organized around a simple premise: emerging technologies should be encountered from more than one point of view. Scientists and technologists reveal what is becoming possible. Artists, musicians, and designers translate those developments into experiences that can be felt, questioned, and discussed. Across intimate conversations, performances, installations, and visits to Santa Barbara’s research environments, each subject moves from the lab, through the studio, and into the city.

BNW is not a series of talks about the future. It is a series of encounters with what the future means.

In broad strokes, how did you go about working on the concept for this year’s BNW? Was it with the intention of changing things up from last year, or evolving?

As I mentioned, we learned important logistical things, and we have been able to hone our message and focus. Last year, many of the artists involved were concerned about the environment, and because Santa Barbara has a storied history in environmental causes, we decided to lean into that this year. BNW 2.0 is dubbed the “Environmental Edition.” Artists presented this year deliver thought-provoking, breathtaking experiences and meditations on our relationship to nature.

Last year, you had a healthy mix of creatives and technology experts — including from Amazon and Google, local divisions, along with UCSB representatives. Is it important to the brand and concept to keep a blend of those two elements in the mix?

It is core to the mission.

Interesting that you are engaging the old Staples building as a home base, which will repurpose the way people think about that property (actually, not unlike your redefinition of the heretofore fairly mysterious interior of the historic Mason Lodge building last year). How did you come to settle on the 410 State Street space for this year’s headquarters?

Yes. We were attracted to the Mason Lodge for those exact reasons. It’s a hidden gem in the city and in line with our charter to elevate the amazing things that go generally unnoticed by the locals. The 410 State Street space is indicative of the strength of our concept as a through line between cultural and technological institutions in the area.

Recently purchased by the University of Santa Barbara and planned, after much community input, as a versatile point of engagement with the city center, 410 is part of a vision to give the University an active and positive presence downtown. BNW embodies much of the vision for that 18,000-square-foot space, which might include expanding and collapsing classroom spaces, as well as performance and gallery areas, among other potential uses. BNW presents many luminaries from the University as speakers and artists. Combined with BNW’s ability to attract international talent, we persuaded the University to allow us to activate the space for our event.

We are thrilled because it is a currently empty, industrial space that is perfect for the massive installation planned.

Speaking of new space, you will also move to the great Hahn Hall for the keynote performance of the Beatie Wolfe film/Eno score, with special guest Money Mark on board. What can you tell me about this piece, and its link to the central theme of the conference?

We are very excited about the Hahn Hall performances. A top priority in our mission is the involvement of our youth. After all, they are the inheritors of the technologies and planetary impacts we have unleashed before them.

Beatie, who was named one of “The Top 20 Most Influential Artists in the World” by Wired magazine, is going to sync her film L.A. Pipedream live to picture with the Santa Barbara Youth Symphony, under the direction of Dr. Daniel Gee. It’s a meditation on the source and uses of water in the Los Angeles basin that runs about 15 minutes. The film score was written by Wolfe and the legendary musician-producer Brian Eno. Dr. Gee is excited to challenge his musicians to sync to film while working with internationally renowned musicians, Beatie loves working with the young musicians, and they are stoked. Win! Win! Win!

Also on that evening’s bill is the “fourth Beastie Boy,” Money Mark. Money Mark is such an incredible person and is one of the most respected keyboardists in music today. He’s toured with the Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop, and Beck, among so many others. For over 10 years, Mark has been obsessed with antique player piano rolls. There are virtually no working original player pianos anymore. The few that exist are incredibly fragile, so Mark, in his well-known keyboard-hacking manner, created a MIDI interface, and now the rolls can be heard as originally “recorded” by masters such as Gershwin and Debussy. Mark will overlay beats and “scratches” as the rolls play. He calls it “Jamming with Dead Composers.” Ha! At BNW, we see it as not only the first example of digital recording — the rolls were the original “punch cards” of computer programming — but also exemplary of our focus on the collaboration of science and the humanities. Plus, I’m just a huge Beastie Boys fan.

Just added to the Hahn Hall card and super exciting is “Neuro-Musician” Gene Coleman and his star-studded ensemble, Conjure. Like the monitoring of the trees that will generate imagery in the Paterakis and Mandouki installation at 410, Coleman and his classical ensemble are wired such that their own biodata is integrated live into their performance. For example, their heartbeats might be synced to create a bass line. The music is mesmerizing and beautiful. You’ve got to see this live.

Beatie was a featured artist last year, presenting and discussing her piece “Smoke and Mirrors.” Does she represent the intersection of art and technology/AI in a bold way, in your mind?

Beatie joined us from London last year on Zoom, so we are ecstatic to have her here in real life and performing with the S.B. Youth Symphony. Beatie represents the activist and musical facet of much of the work presented by the artists in BNW, and less about the tech crossover, although much of her work is highly scientifically based.

We dropped “AI and Technology” as a tagline and replaced it with “New and Emerging Technologies in the Hands of Artists” to distinguish between AI-generated imagery that is prominent in deepfakes and images that have just been manipulated through prompts. The art being made by the artists is generative, but they use data sets to visualize complex concepts — like the way trees “communicate” with each other.

You also put focus on tech work being done at UCSB and SBHS Vada program, to cite two local connections. Do you feel that Santa Barbara is becoming increasingly plugged into the tech world and community?

Yes. There is a growing consensus here that Santa Barbara can become a true Renaissance city in our time. The Santa Barbara Coastal Chamber of Commerce promotes “TechTopia,” for instance.

Florence was a beautiful location in which the collaboration of science and the humanities produced some of the most innovative technologies and spectacular art and architecture ever. The reason the Renaissance happened in Florence and not in France or Rome was because Florence was not beholden to the French monarchy or the papacy. Florence was a merchant city that enjoyed its own banking rules and enormous wealth.

All analogies break down at some point, but it’s not hard to make a broad comparison to Santa Barbara today: not beholden to L.A. or New York, beautiful location, new cutting-edge technologies (Google Quantum, Amazon AI, Blue Laser Fusion), legacy art institutions (SBMA, the Symphony), and enormous wealth that can be argued plays by its own rules.

BNW aspires to be the connective tissue in such a vision by promoting our local talent while bringing exciting international artists to collaborate with them, helping to form the city into an international hub of technology and culture.

How do you see the ideal future of BNW? Do you have any kind of five-year (or other time frame) plan for the project?

One thousand percent. Our five-year goal is to have a citywide, internationally recognized festival that will activate all the current institutional partners while also incorporating more music and performances at places such as the Lobero and Granada theaters and the Santa Barbara Bowl. We are already in conversation with sponsors who are planning their spend for 2027 and 2028 and expect to expand programming next year.

Who would you say is your target audience for the conference?

BNW touches all the elements of what it means to be in a particular place at a particular time. By that I mean BNW’s drive to collaborate has broad appeal to cultural consumers, concerned citizens, team leaders, educators and academics, civic administrators, multidisciplinary artists, research scientists, graduate and PhD students in computer engineering, linguistics, electrical engineering, statistics, art and philosophy, curators, journalists, venture capitalists, fund managers, and investors.

Local flora and fauna are invited, too.

For more information, see bravenewworksb.org